Message for the Mess Age

The album was produced by Terry Adams and Joey Spampinato.[8] It was the last album to which guitar player Al Anderson contributed; he used a Fender Squier guitar and amp.[9][10] Johnny Spampinato took Anderson's position.[11] Gary Windo played saxophone on "Spampinato", a song about the correct way to spell the bass player's name.[12][13]

The band wrote six new songs for Message for the Mess Age.[14] "Don't Bite the Hand" is about the banality of mainstream music.[15] "Ramona" and "A Better Word for Love" are performed as ballads.[16] The lyrics to "Over Your Head" were inspired by journalistic reporting of the Gulf War.[17]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Calgary Herald	B+[9]
Chicago Tribune	[13]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[18]
MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide	[19]
Orlando Sentinel	[20]
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette	[21]
(The New) Rolling Stone Album Guide	[22]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	7/10[23]
The Tampa Tribune	[16]
USA Today	[24]

The Austin American-Statesman wrote that Anderson's songs "are the album's strongest, and they provide a necessary balance for Adams' incorrigible whimsy, which occasionally infects the material with an incurable case of the cutes."[25] The Los Angeles Times noted that, "if overall the album lacks the seamless wonder of its predecessor, Wild Weekend, it's only because the band's laudable willingness to experiment inevitably produces some failures."[26] The Vancouver Sun deemed NRBQ "the world's premier pop-rock-jazz-country quartet."[27]

The Orlando Sentinel determined that "the production has a lustrous sheen, but the arrangements are full of striking and unusual details."[20] The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called the album "infectious, foot-stomping music... And the quirkiness reflected in the disc's title is found throughout."[21] The Gazette stated that "NRBQ is virtually alone in expressing the sense of wonder at the heart of great pop, a band putting effortless complexity and more chops than the lumberjack union at the service of throwaway, top-down summer-breeze toons."[28]